What is the Best Way to Explain the Climate Crisis?

Yale Climate Connections recently published an audio/text article by psychologist/researcher/journalist Renée Lertzman, "Why frightening facts don't always move people to action on climate change." The article noted "Ask people what they know and want to learn. Then have a conversation [ . . . because] it can get results faster." She said “When we take a compassion-based approach, we are actively disarming defenses so that people are actually more willing and able to respond and engage quicker. And we don’t have time right now to mess around, and so I do actually come to this topic with a sense of urgency…. We do not have time to not take this approach.”  

With some groups, especially those at or under the age of 16, I agree. However, in general with those 17 and above, I prefer writer James Baldwin's quote, "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced."  In the 2016 documentary film Before the Flood, astronaut and former Director, Earth Sciences Division, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Piers Sellers says "the ice is melting, the Earth is warming, the sea level is rising – those are facts. Rather than being, 'oh my god, this is hopeless', say, 'OK, this is the problem, let’s be realistic and let’s find a way out of it'. And there are ways out of it. If we stopped burning fossil fuels right now, the planet would still keep warming for a little while before cooling off again." At the time he says this, he has "pancreatic cancer, stage four," and dies December 23, 2016, about two months after the film is released October 21, 2016.  I observed people close to death get rare perspective and honesty, and Sellers gives both. He said his experience in space made him "immensely more fond of the planet [ . . . ] which I never thought about when I [ . . . ] just lived on the surface. And also kind of fond of the people on there too. It's like being taken away from your family and coming back. And [ . . . ] I wish it all well."

In the past four years, however, climate news has grown much worse. In the reposted video below, Dahr Jamail says "At this point, knowing all of the science as I know it, it's really hard to see how humans make it through this." and "Today's carbon dioxide levels [in May, 2019, of 412 ppm] are already in accordance with what historically brought about a steady state temperature of 7 C higher globally [above year 1850 baseline]. [NOAA's climate.gov site noted "The global average atmospheric carbon dioxide in 2019 was 409.8 parts per million (ppm for short), with a range of uncertainty of plus or minus 0.1 ppm. Carbon dioxide levels today are higher than at any point in at least the past 800,000 years.] Jamail continues, "We're losing 2.4 percent of global insect biomass every year. [ . . . ] There will be no insects within a hundred years. No insects basically means no humans." and "The International Energy Agency stated that preserving our current economic paradigm virtually guarantees a 6 C rise in Earth's average temperature before 2050."

According to Jamail's Website, his book The End of Ice was "one of Smithsonian Magazine’s 10 Best Science Books of 2019, and was a finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award in 2020." The book's Website notes "Jamail embarks on a journey to the geographical front lines of this crisis—from Alaska to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, via the Amazon rainforest" and includes "the tundra of St. Paul Island where he meets the last subsistence seal hunters of the Bering Sea and witnesses its collapsing food web." Jamail, a fourth-generation Lebanese American, received the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Award for Journalism, The Lannan Foundation Writing Residency Fellowship, the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, the Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage, and five Project Censored awards.

Regarding the often-heard "People are too stressed to think about climate change," I recall Jeff Goodell, Rolling Stone contributing editor and author of The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World, in a Comedy Central interview, "We can do more than one thing at a time. We're not like one-year-olds. It's possible to think about two, maybe three things, simultaneously, and I think that climate change should be one of them."

At 42:10 in the video below Jamail asks "What do we do knowing all of that, [ . . . ] and I think more importantly, how are we going to be in what we do?" He suggests Cherokee Elder Stan Rushworth's point about "rights vs obligations." Jamail said, "I am obliged, no matter what, to serve future generations, and to serve the planet. [ . . . . ] Since we've never been here, we don't know what's going to happen. [ . . . . ] One of the stories that I write about is being up on a peak in the Deception Basin area in the Olympics [ . . .] at 7,000 feet, roughly 2000 feet above treeline, [and] there is this tree growing [ . . .] out of this [ . . . ] crack in this rock. [ . . . ] Given half a chance, life is going to persist. [ . . . . ] The two questions I'll send you home to ponder are: 'Where do you go to listen to Mis Misa [healing, and centering place]?' and 'When was the last time you went there to listen?'"

When Suz and I visited trails near Mt. Shasta (Mis Misa), I took the photos below Jamail's video.

On the Trail to Avalanche Gulch

Castle Lake

Castle Lake from Above

Gateway Peace Garden